- UK: Starmer publicly fantasizes that he can ban kids from social media
Source: Associated Press
“Britain will ban under-16s from using a range of social media apps, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday, calling it ‘a big moment for our country.’ Starmer told a news conference that he will fight back if technology companies resist the move, intended to [grandstand on the fantasy of ‘protecting’] children from harmful content and excessive screen time. He said he is ‘not prepared to compromise on the safety and happiness of our children.’ The move makes the U.K. part of growing global movement to tighten online safety for children. Australia, Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced legislation or announced age-based restrictions or requirements for children’s access to social media. France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.” (06/15/26)
https://apnews.com/article/uk-teen-social-media-ban-starmer-55de428636b586ff5553b604783f6fb3
- FL: Scientists set record after removing four tons of invasive Burmese pythons
Source: Seattle Times
“Four tons of invasive Burmese pythons were removed from South Florida ecosystems during the latest breeding season, setting a record for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. The achievement marks a new milestone in the fight against the giant snakes, which are considered one of the greatest threats to the Everglades ecosystem because of their ability to prey on mammals, birds and other native wildlife. The Conservancy said it removed more python biomass this season than at any point since launching its research and removal program in 2013. … the team captured 177 invasive Burmese pythons with a combined weight of 8,080 pounds.” (06/14/26)
- Stepson of Norway’s crown prince jailed for four years in rape case
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“An Oslo district court has sentenced Marius Borg Hoiby, the stepson of Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon, to four years in prison for rape and other crimes. Hoiby, 29, became part of the royal family when his mother, Mette-Marit, married Haakon in 2001. The court convicted Hoiby of two counts of rape as well as domestic violence against his former partner Nora Haukland and narcotics offences. He was acquitted on two separate rape counts with judges finding insufficient proof that the encounters were nonconsensual. One of the rapes he was convicted of took place in the basement of the crown prince’s official Skaugum residence. While denying the rape charges, Hoiby had pleaded guilty to domestic abuse and transporting 3.5kg (7.7lb) of marijuana in 2020.” (06/15/26)
- Ukraine: Nine killed, historic monastery on fire in Russian attacks
Source: Reuters
“Four people were killed while the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a symbol of Ukrainian spiritual and cultural history, caught fire, in the heaviest Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital in two weeks, authorities said on Monday. The fresh strikes came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday he had spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump and discussed efforts to achieve an end to the more than four-year conflict, ahead of a G7 meeting in France this week. … Four emergency service rescuers and one municipal official were killed and at least another five injured after a second Russian strike hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram, with three people, including a child, wounded in Sumy, according to social media posts by local authorities.” (06/15/26)
- US regime to sign instrument of surrender to Iran on Friday
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Iran and the United States have agreed to a memorandum of understanding to end more than 100 days of war, with Tehran saying the agreement includes Lebanon, which has been under intense Israeli attacks since March 2. Mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, the deal will be formally signed in the Swiss city of Geneva on Friday. … According to the Iranian news agency Mehr, the draft agreement contains 14 points. It includes: A permanent and immediate cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon; the complete lifting of the naval blockade within 30 days; a US commitment to withdraw its forces from around Iran; and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The draft also mentions the suspension of sanctions on oil sales, reaching a final agreement on nuclear issues within 60 days of signing the deal, and the release of $24bn in frozen Iranian assets during the 60-day negotiation period.” (06/15/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/15/us-iran-to-sign-a-peace-deal-on-friday-what-we-know-so-far
- NY: Idiot pols fantasize that they can control guns, 3D printing
Source: The Columbian
“A first-of-its-kind law in New York could force 3D printers sold for homes and business to come equipped with technology blocking them from making guns. The new requirement, also under consideration in California, attempts to thwart the latest technique for producing untraceable ‘ghost guns’ that have turned up in crimes. … A New York law signed last month and a bill in the California Legislature both would direct panels of experts to come up with standards for firearm blueprint detection algorithms. The technology would analyze every design submitted for 3D printing, compare it to a digital library of firearm parts and reject those that are similar.” [editor’s note: If the idea wasn’t so irredeemably evil, it would be kind of funny to watch them fantasize about their ability to implement it – TLK] (06/14/26)
https://www.columbian.com/news/2026/jun/14/n-y-law-targets-printed-weapons/
- Switzerland: Voters projected to reject population cap proposal
Source: Deutsche Welle [German state media]
“Voters in Switzerland on Sunday cast ballots to decide the fate of a proposal to cap the Alpine nation’s population at 10 million by 2050. Preliminary projections by national broadcaster SRF have indicated that the proposal has been rejected by some 55% as against 45% in favor. Under Switzerland’s direct democracy system, referendums are mostly binding in their effect. The proposal has been put forward by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which has the most seats in the Swiss parliament. Currently, Switzerland has a population of 9.1 million.” (06/14/26)
https://www.dw.com/en/swiss-voters-projected-to-reject-population-cap-proposal/a-77543868
- Bitcoin hits a two-week high above $65,500
Source: CoinDesk
“Bitcoin climbed to its highest level in nearly two weeks after the US and Iran reached a deal to end hostilities and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, removing the energy-supply fear that had weighed on markets for months. The token traded around $65,844 on Monday, up 2.1% over 24 hours, after touching a low near $63,722 in the early hours of Asian trading before the deal news broke, per CoinDesk data. The move puts bitcoin about 9% above the sub-$60,000 low it hit last week, its weakest level since October 2024.” (06/15/26)
- Trump keeps baiting Democrats into fights that don’t matter
Source: USA Today
by Dace Potas“Democrats have a nasty habit of criticizing President Donald Trump for the wrong reasons. They latch onto the most visceral thing he has done lately and let it crowd out more legitimate criticisms. The latest example is the renovation of the National Mall’s Reflecting Pool. Crews painted the bottom a deep blue, which Trump claimed would improve reflectivity – and by most accounts, it has. His opponents say otherwise. California Gov. Gavin Newsom insisted the project was a mess, the Democratic Party maintained it was ineffective, and the media sought out historians who spoke against the project. Trump is often difficult to attack precisely because there is so much noise. Democrats reach for the most trivial targets, and in doing so, the more important points can get lost. They should spend less time on the nonsense and more on what actually matters.” (06/15/26)
- The Taiwan Lobby moves to put a full court press on Trump
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Joseph Solis-Mullen“Perhaps fearful of abandonment, or of being treated as a mere ‘bargaining chip’ in negotiations with Beijing, Taiwan has worked diligently to ingratiate itself with President Donald Trump’s inner circle. Just last month, Taipei hired Checkmate Government Relations, a firm whose founder, Ches McDowell, enjoys close ties to Donald Trump Jr. and access to the president himself. The six-month contract is worth roughly $300,000. The move follows Taiwan’s 2025 decision to retain Ballard Partners, another well-connected Washington firm led by prominent Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard. Yet Taiwan’s influence operation is hardly confined to one party.” (06/15/26)
- The Bipartisan Roots of Trump’s War in Latin America
Source: Libertarian Institute
by José Niño“When a resurfaced clip of Joe Biden’s 1989 speech went viral in December 2025, it created an awkward moment for Democrats attacking President Donald Trump’s military campaign against alleged drug boats. In that speech, delivered as the official Democratic Party response to President George H.W. Bush’s address on the crack cocaine epidemic, then-Senator Biden declared with unmistakable clarity what he wanted the United States to do. … That 1989 rhetoric now reads like a blueprint for exactly what the Trump administration has done since September 2025, when U.S. forces began destroying vessels that the Pentagon claims are operated by cartel-linked organizations—starting in the Caribbean off Venezuela and expanding to the eastern Pacific in October.” (06/15/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/the-bipartisan-roots-of-trumps-war-in-latin-america/
- The Long Tradition of Wealth-Extracting Socialists
Source: The Daily Economy
by Emmanuel Rincon“For centuries, some of the most prominent advocates of socialism have spent their lives condemning the accumulation of wealth while privately amassing fortunes of their own. In many cases, they have even used revolutionary rhetoric as a vehicle to gain power and extract wealth from productive sectors of society. From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin, from Fidel Castro to Hugo Chávez, many of these figures denounced private wealth and entrepreneurship, despite the fact that few, if any, lived according to the austere principles they publicly promoted. Instead, many enjoyed lives marked by privilege, luxury, and the very economic advantages they claimed to despise. This pattern is not confined to communist regimes. In the United States, self-described socialists have often criticized wealth accumulation — until they themselves became wealthy.” (06/15/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-long-tradition-of-wealth-extracting-socialists/
- Moloch in the Regulatory State
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Thiago VS Coelho“Civilization does not usually fail because every participant is stupid, vicious, or indifferent. It fails because people are placed inside systems where the locally-prudent action sustains a globally-absurd result. ‘Moloch’ is Eliezer Yudkowsky’s name for these impersonal traps: arrangements in which nearly everyone would prefer a better world, but no individual can safely move there alone. The broad failures fall into three recurring types. First, the decisionmaker is not the beneficiary. A regulator, hospital administrator, licensing board, journal editor, or politician makes a rule whose costs are borne mainly by others. Second, there is asymmetric information. Someone knows the relevant fact, but cannot credibly transmit it through the institutional fog. Third, society is stuck in an inferior equilibrium: everyone responds rationally to the incentives in front of him, while the system as a whole remains inferior to another possible arrangement.” (06/15/26)
- Jailed by an Algorithm: The Surveillance State Fails
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey“Flawed AI puts innocent Floridians behind bars. Police trade due diligence for bad algorithms. We must hold the state accountable.” (06/14/26)
https://palmbeachexaminer.substack.com/p/jailed-by-an-algorithm-the-surveillance
- Protests Are Not Emotional Support Groups
Source: Persuasion
by Dan Storyev & Maria Kuznetsova“If Americans want to actually enact change, they seriously need to re-think their strategy. Take it from us: we both grew up in Putin’s Russia and saw well-intentioned protests fail to stop an aspiring despot. We know that authoritarians are typically unwilling to respond to the kind of protest No Kings exemplifies: loud, raucous, and ultimately harmless. These ‘festival protests,’ as we call them, are convenient for their participants. They are fun and usually do not require much sacrifice or risk. They also look good on TV and TikTok feeds. But they often achieve next to nothing. Why are so many people convinced they work?” (06/14/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/protests-are-not-emotional-support
- John Dickinson and the Case Against Independence
Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Rob Natelson“[O]n July 1, convinced that while Independence might one day be necessary, it was as yet premature, Dickinson rose to make his case against the pending declaration. Only by understanding the risks and terrors Dickinson predicted can we fully appreciate the courage of those who were determined to face them. Let us, as President Richard Nixon used to say, make one thing perfectly clear: Dickinson was no coward. He was brave and a patriot. When Britain adopted the Townshend Duties in 1767, it was Dickinson who inspired the opposition. It was Dickinson who, again and again, had served as penman and point man for the colonial resistance. Yet Dickinson also loved the mother country.” (06/14/26)
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/06/14/john-dickinson-and-the-case-against-independence/
- Movies for Queers Who Like Revolution
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“If it’s June, then it must be Pride and straight people everywhere are celebrating how far you’ve come. You know, out of the closets and onto MTV. But what if you don’t particularly feel like celebrating?” (06/14/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/06/movies-for-queers-who-like-revolution.html
- Gordon Wood, the Bard of the American Revolution
Source: The American Conservative
by Nicholas Mosvick“he preeminent historian of the American Founding, Gordon Wood, died last week as the result of a traffic accident. Wood, a long-time professor at Brown University, had a profound and prolific effect upon the historiography of the American Revolution and the Founding in an academic career spanning six decades. Significantly, he was the first leading historian to emphasize the importance of republican thought and principles, both classical and modern, to 18th-century America, a tradition that later gave way to the totalizing force of equality and democratization.” (06/14/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/gordon-wood-the-bard-of-the-american-revolution/
- The Hidden Price of Social Security
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Athan Clark“A worker earning $60,000 a year sends 12.4% of his wages to Social Security: $7,440 annually, every year of his working life. Half is deducted from his paycheck; the other half is paid by his employer, which economists broadly agree comes out of the worker’s wages anyway, though he never sees it. There is no deposit slip or account with his name on it, but this is money that would otherwise be his. That same $7,440 a year, invested for 40 years at an inflation-adjusted 7% — roughly the long-run historical performance of US equities — would accumulate to about $1.5 million. Social Security, by contrast, offers most younger workers an implicit inflation-adjusted return in the range of 1% to 2%, and lower still for higher earners.” (06/12/26)
https://fee.org/articles/the-hidden-price-of-social-security/
- Could Donald Trump Finally End America’s Twice Yearly Clock-Setting Nightmare?
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“Twice a year, every year, for more than a century now, most Americans ‘spring forward’ or ‘fall back,’ pretending that an hour has been deleted from, or inserted into, our sleep schedules. Our bodies spend weeks adjusting to each ‘new normal,’ leading to, among other things, measurable increases in traffic fatalities. … US president Donald Trump wants the government to knock off its weird time-shifting magic routine. Some Trump-watchers even suggest that he cares enough to make it one of his ‘loyalty test’ issues, punishing politicians who don’t toe the line. Therefore, Congress will likely vote on something called the ‘Sunshine Protection Act’ later this summer. … Thank you, President Trump, for your attention to this matter!” (06/13/26)
- Measuring Trump 2.0 Against Trump 1.0: Tariff Boasts Meet the Data
Source: The Daily Economy
by Donald J Boudreaux“In his State of the Union address earlier this year, President Trump boasted that ‘one of the primary reasons for our country’s stunning economic turnaround, the biggest in history, where the Dow Jones broke 50,000, four years ahead of schedule, and the S&P hit 7000 where it wasn’t supposed to do it for many years, were tariffs.’ The facts tell a different story. First, because there is no schedule for stock-market gains, it is meaningless to say that the Dow Jones or S&P 500 rose ‘ahead of schedule.’ The reality is that the US economy during the first year of President Trump’s second term simply did not perform a ‘turnaround,’ much less one that could be ranked as ‘the biggest in history.'” (06/12/25)
- Politics ain’t beanbag. But character still matters.
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle“It’s hard to denounce [Graham] Platner while supporting [Ken] Paxton (or Donald Trump), but that won’t stop many Republicans from trying. The reverse is also true. Many Democrats will assure themselves that this is entirely different, even though it’s much the same. It is a rejection of the idea that character matters in politics. Some readers may retort that it doesn’t matter, that people of bad character can still make fine public servants. Politicians needn’t be saints. But nor should Americans mindlessly vote for whoever represents their party without any care for character. Nominating those who are obviously unscrupulous and unstable is bad for the country — and, frequently, for America’s parties.” (06/14/26)
- The Right Kind of Eugenics
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman“Eugenics, broadly defined, is the use of selective breeding to improve the human race. Most people imagine it as government control of reproduction intended to improve the population’s genetics by encouraging reproduction by those with good genes, discouraging or banning reproduction by those with bad; what policies qualify depends on what you count as improvement. Getting parents more nearly the children they want is in my view a better definition of ‘improvement’ than giving them more nearly the children the government wants them to have. Getting parents the children they want, like getting other people what they want, is best done by leaving the choice up to them. If making it easier for parents to affect the genetics of their children seems to you an odd form of eugenics, consider the equivalent issue in economics.” (06/13/26)
https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/the-right-kind-of-eugenics
- Pink Flame of Liberty, 06/14/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Iowa GOP and RFJ Jr attempt to get Iowa Libertarians OFF THE BALLOT.” (06/14/26)
- Eric Fowler on The Scott Horton Show
Source: The Scott Horton Show
“Scott interviews libertarian activist Eric Fowler about the so-called Flock cameras being put up in cities to illegally surveil Americans. Fowler explains what the cameras are, how they work, what laws they violate and how libertarians in Arizona are fighting back.” (06/14/26)
- Zooming In, 06/14/26
Source: The UnPopulist
“The Trump Administration’s Anti-Foreigner Animus Is a Betrayal of the World Cup — the Most Cosmopolitan Sport on Earth.” (06/14/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-trump-administrations-anti-foreigner
- Unattended Baggage, episode 344
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Grok just stole your retirement.” (06/13/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-344-grok-just-stole-your